AccessibleRelations

David Bolter <david.bolter <at> utoronto.ca>
2003-06-02 21:02:16 GMT

Hi all.
I have my suspicions that there hasn't been a lot of testing of the
AccessibleRelation stuff. I have done some work today on gok that makes
uses of this promising API. I am so far not finding an application that
is exposing such an interface in an expected ontext. In particular this
is what I am looking for:
An accessible object that has an AccessibleEditableText interface *and*
a LABELLED_BY relation. Presumeably gtk dialogs would be prime
candidates (since the text fields probably don't expose useful names by
themselves). Can someone please confirm such a beast? I need to know
if my code is broken.
cheers,
David

Re: AccessibleRelations

Bill Haneman <bill.haneman <at> sun.com>
2003-06-02 21:45:45 GMT

David:
There's been a substantial amount of testing of AccessibleRelation. I
believe that it's fairly commonly implemented across the GNOME 2
desktop. I don't have the examples to hand but I do believe it's not
uncommon.
You can use at-poke to check for the presence of this API. Note however
that until recently there were difficulties with reciprocity (we could
fairly easily automatically provide LABEL_FOR but LABELLED_BY wasn't
alwayws reciprocally exposed). However I believe this has recently been
fixed/worked around in GAIL, so a recent build may expose LABELLED_BY
more frequently.
regards,
Bill
On Mon, 2003-06-02 at 22:02, David Bolter wrote:
> Hi all.
>
> I have my suspicions that there hasn't been a lot of testing of the
> AccessibleRelation stuff. I have done some work today on gok that makes
> uses of this promising API. I am so far not finding an application that
> is exposing such an interface in an expected ontext. In particular this
> is what I am looking for:
>
> An accessible object that has an AccessibleEditableText interface *and*
> a LABELLED_BY relation. Presumeably gtk dialogs would be prime
> candidates (since the text fields probably don't expose useful names by

Re: AccessibleRelations

Try the gtk-demo appliction, and use the Dialog and message Boxes option.
Note that as gtk-demo is a pure GTK programs ratehr than a GNOME program you
must set the environment variable GTK_MODULES to "gail:atk-bridge" for it to be
accessible.
Padraig
> David:
>
> There's been a substantial amount of testing of AccessibleRelation. I
> believe that it's fairly commonly implemented across the GNOME 2
> desktop. I don't have the examples to hand but I do believe it's not
> uncommon.
>
> You can use at-poke to check for the presence of this API. Note however
> that until recently there were difficulties with reciprocity (we could
> fairly easily automatically provide LABEL_FOR but LABELLED_BY wasn't
> alwayws reciprocally exposed). However I believe this has recently been
> fixed/worked around in GAIL, so a recent build may expose LABELLED_BY
> more frequently.
>
> regards,
>
> Bill
>
> On Mon, 2003-06-02 at 22:02, David Bolter wrote:
> > Hi all.
> >
> > I have my suspicions that there hasn't been a lot of testing of the

Re: AccessibleRelations

David Bolter <david.bolter <at> utoronto.ca>
2003-06-03 11:54:27 GMT

Thanks Padraig, Bill,
I had forgotten that GTK_MODULES variable! I was testing with gedit
etc. Okay I using at-poke I am seeing a LABEL_FOR relation. I was
hoping to see a LABELED_BY for the text box but don't see it on the
at-poke dialog. I shall have to invesitgate further (get a recent GAIL
build etc.)
I'll let you know how it goes - I am distracted today but want to get
this working and in cvs as the modification to gok-spy will help with
other work.
cheers,
David
Padraig O'Briain wrote:
>Try the gtk-demo appliction, and use the Dialog and message Boxes option.
>
>Note that as gtk-demo is a pure GTK programs ratehr than a GNOME program you
>must set the environment variable GTK_MODULES to "gail:atk-bridge" for it to be
>accessible.
>
>Padraig
>
>
>
>>David:
>>

Re: AccessibleRelations

David Bolter <david.bolter <at> utoronto.ca>
2003-06-03 12:05:36 GMT

Bill,
Bill Haneman wrote:
>David:
>
>There's been a substantial amount of testing of AccessibleRelation.
>
Okay great! I am pleased to be wrong there. I was looking at old
archived messages...
> I
>believe that it's fairly commonly implemented across the GNOME 2
>desktop. I don't have the examples to hand but I do believe it's not
>uncommon.
>
>You can use at-poke to check for the presence of this API. Note however
>that until recently there were difficulties with reciprocity (we could
>fairly easily automatically provide LABEL_FOR but LABELLED_BY wasn't
>alwayws reciprocally exposed). However I believe this has recently been
>fixed/worked around in GAIL, so a recent build may expose LABELLED_BY
>more frequently.
>
Great, that gives me some direction. LABELED_BY would keep the code
cleaner.
cheers,
David

Re: AccessibleRelations

> Thanks Padraig, Bill,
>
> I had forgotten that GTK_MODULES variable! I was testing with gedit
> etc. Okay I using at-poke I am seeing a LABEL_FOR relation. I was
> hoping to see a LABELED_BY for the text box but don't see it on the
> at-poke dialog. I shall have to invesitgate further (get a recent GAIL
> build etc.)
>
You ought to see it with gail from CVS HEAD. I have just checked that it works
correctly.
> I'll let you know how it goes - I am distracted today but want to get
> this working and in cvs as the modification to gok-spy will help with
> other work.
>
> cheers,
>
> David
>
> Padraig O'Briain wrote:
>
> >Try the gtk-demo appliction, and use the Dialog and message Boxes option.
> >
> >Note that as gtk-demo is a pure GTK programs ratehr than a GNOME program you
> >must set the environment variable GTK_MODULES to "gail:atk-bridge" for it to
be
> >accessible.
> >

Re: AccessibleRelations

David Bolter <david.bolter <at> utoronto.ca>
2003-06-03 13:58:09 GMT

Padraig O'Briain wrote:
>
>
>>Thanks Padraig, Bill,
>>
>>I had forgotten that GTK_MODULES variable! I was testing with gedit
>>etc. Okay I using at-poke I am seeing a LABEL_FOR relation. I was
>>hoping to see a LABELED_BY for the text box but don't see it on the
>>at-poke dialog. I shall have to invesitgate further (get a recent GAIL
>>build etc.)
>>
>>
>>
>
>You ought to see it with gail from CVS HEAD. I have just checked that it works
>correctly.
>
Yes. Thanks.
David
[snip]

GNOME Speech Stardard Parameters

Marc Mulcahy <marc.mulcahy <at> sun.com>
2003-06-03 18:21:04 GMT

Hi All,
We've standardized on the following GNOME Speech parameter names.
Gnopernicus should use these so that the commands to change speech
parameters work properly. We had agreed on these some time ago:
Parameter Name Description
rate Speech rate in words per minute
pitch Speech baseline pitch in Hz.
volume Speech volume 0-100 (percentage)
I'll file a bug against Gnopernicus on this if you really want me to
:) it's not exactly a Gnopernicus bug.
Marc

Gnopernicus and Balsa

Marc Mulcahy <marc.mulcahy <at> sun.com>
2003-06-03 22:51:22 GMT

Hi All,
Gnopernicus does work with Balsa. However, there are a few issues:
1. With speech, the least relevant things about table lines are read first
(I.E. "table line" and the number of items). Most of the time, I could
care less how many items are in a table line. Imho, the default ought to
be just to read the contents of the table line and then maybe say table
line, althought saying "table line" isn't incredibly useful.
2. The text box which displays the email message doesn't have a cursor,
since it's not editable. gnopernicus apparently has no way to review/read
this text. I think at the very least, we need a command on the numeric
pad to read the contents of the current item.
3. The Braille display of table lines is confusing-- the dots 4568 used to
separate columns is good, but there needs to be spaces between the end of
the text of the table column and the column separator. Otherwise, it all
sorta runs together and it's hard to distinguish where the table columns
are divided. Just my opinion.
BTW, for anyone else who wants to try this, just know that all the
labels for the text boxes you have to fill in follow the textboxes--
so use numpad six to find them when you hear "text".
Marc

Question about reading text "blobs"

Mark's recent posts about Gnopernicus and Balsa reminded me of something
I have been meaning to get some advice about:
I am writing an application which will need to be accessible (think of
something like a talking book). Portions of the display of this
application are chunks of text that I am currently dropping into a text
widget which I have marked in Glade as not editable and "don't show
cursor". Does this mean I am going to have to go to extra lengths to
make sure that a screen reader will be able to see the contents? Or
should I permit the cursor to be moved around the text and just not
allow editing?
I seem to have worked out that I need to leave the text widget as able
to take the focus just so that a screen reader can get there in the
first place. This seems necessary just so that any scrollbars can be
manipulated via the keyboard.
My accessibility setup on my computers is a bit suspicious at the
moment; sometimes it works, sometimes things go pear-shaped. So it is a
bit hard to tell if things are broken by design or broken by accident
when I am testing some of this.
Any advice appreciated,
Malcolm